


Watching The Open Box

by tangentti



Category: Watchmen (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28231563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentti/pseuds/tangentti
Summary: It's a miracle that water is wet.
Kudos: 4





	Watching The Open Box

She stepped, overbalanced and was in the water over her head. Her clothes dragged at her as she clawed for the surface, and suddenly her reaching hand was caught in another strong grip that lifted her effortlessly. For a moment, she thought Cal had returned, but water streamed from her eyes, and she saw the naked woman stepping back, eyes glowing blue. The water pushed her up, and she stood on the gently flexing surface. The other woman didn’t move at all, a still point on the surface of the fluid.

“Why am I naked?” she asked her mirrored self, puzzled. She herself had dry clothes mysteriously when moments ago she was wet.

“It’s complicated, but let’s say it is symbolic: birth, your love for Cal, no need for masks from yourself, invulnerable.” The voice was an echo of her own, but distant. Like when she first met Manhattan, full on god mode.

She tapped a bare foot on the water, making waves. “You are future me?” she guessed, knowing she was wrong.

“Jon Osterman was an atomic scientist of the fifties, a man in awe of Einstein, and thought of the universe in terms he had been taught. When he was put outside the universe and had to come back in, he built his own cage from his preconceptions. You’ll have to learn this on your own, to understand, but he thought of the universe as a four-dimensional block, unchanging, no difference between past and future. No choices.” She raised water from the pool, a solid cube of ice, leaving a cubic hole, mysteriously exempt from water flowing into it.

“He was always sad, under the distance. Being Cal let him be happy.” She touched the ice, and it melted, sharp cube to smooth sphere.

“You grew up in a different world,” the distant voice came, “and live in a different universe. Again, you have to learn on your own, but you’ve heard it in passing, read it in a magazine, seen it on TV with the children: the cat that is both dead and alive until someone makes a choice to open the box. Much more fluid.” The water remembered it was subject to gravity, and fell, filling the hole exactly. Just the pool, and two miracles standing on it.

“I chose to have free will?” It sounded a little odd, when it came from her mouth.

“The fact that you always had choices was revealed to you. Hidden while Manhattan was alive, as he structured the world more powerfully than others.”

She reached out and touched the woman, feeling the slight tingle from the skin, the sensation of power. “So who are you, then?”

“I’m the one inside the box, pure possibility. You’re the one who choses to open the box and receive the world.”

“I can’t get Cal back, can I?” She knew the answer as she spoke. “No, all this is predicated on him being dead. I could make him, a man without a past, or knowledge of being a god, but it wouldn’t be him.” The woman looked at her, silently, without judging. “Can I keep the children safe?” She knew the answer to that, as well. “For a time, yes, but not forever, not without making them puppets.” It was all too big to think about. “Why did I let myself fall into the water?”

“Complicated: baptism, and a reminder that not everything turns out as you desire.” The blank expression on her face turned a smile, “And it’s fun to be surprised.”

“So it’s tits out as a goddess, then? You following me around making miracles?”

“There’s only you. This knowledge will probably take the form of a conversation in your memory, and be full of symbols like a dream.” The woman was for a brief moment standing on the other side of the water, feet matching hers. 

She looked down at her god-self, and suddenly saw only her own reflection. It was a miracle that water was wet, fluid, and she fell into it again, splashing water everywhere. She stroked for the edge of the pool, feeling the drag of her sodden clothing. “Cartoon rules. I get it, me, don’t look down and you won’t fall.” Her love had been Fate, inescapable, but all too blatant. She would be Luck, deniable and invisible.


End file.
